Skills needed for Interim Management

Skills needed for Interim Management play to womens strengths

Interim Partners points out that more females are taking up interim roles because their skills closely match the specifications needed.

Gail Fitzgerald explains: Interims have to enter a new placement and must immediately hit the ground running. Being able to build relationships, communicate effectively and manage stakeholders are all crucial skills and these all play to womens traditional strengths.

The increasing number of women taking interim careers also follows the broader trend for women to take more entrepreneurial and risk-taking roles. Being an interim is as close to running your own business as most executives will get within a corporate environment.

There are also now more successful female role models both as entrepreneurs and as trouble shooters, such as in the clean up of the Icelandic banking system, to inspire women to become interim executives.

According to Interim Partners, the increasing number of women becoming interims can also be explained by the realisation that the safety of a full time job is not as robust as once thought.

Gail Fitzgerald says: Senior executives now realise that the cocoon they may have felt protected by in full time employment at large corporates before the recession doesnt really exist. The recession has shown that if a company does not need your skills they will let you go.

Women realise that the risks of becoming a self-employed interim are not as great as they thought.